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Thousands of Natural Gas Leaks Found In Boston
poofmeisterp writes "Due to old cast iron underground pipelines, natural gas leaks run amok in Boston, MA. '"While our study was not intended to assess explosion risks, we came across six locations in Boston where gas concentrations exceeded the threshold above which explosions can occur," Nathan Phillips, associate professor at BU, said in a statement.' With 'a device to measure methane' in a vehicle equipped with GPS, Duke and Boston University researchers created a nice little map showing the methane levels in parts per million at different points in the city. 'Repairing these leaks will improve air quality, increase consumer health and safety, and save money,' study researcher Robert B. Jackson, of Duke, said in a statement. 'We just have to put the right financial incentives into place.' It looks like money is an issue. Imagine that."
Let's say it costs $500 million to fix. But it only costs $200 million a year to leave it as is. Guess which option would get chosen.
Does Boston really smell that bad that no one could smell these gas leaks?
"'Repairing these leaks will improve air quality, increase consumer health and safety, and save money,"
Gee, ya think?
Just don't tell the TERRORISTS.
I'm sorry, but money is always an issue for literally everything. We live in a world of finite workers and resources, and thus the abstraction of that, which we call money, is an important limiting factor on any task, no matter what the risk or rewards. The amusing irony is that treating money like its not a factor makes money more of a factor, by causing the limitations to appear at unexpected times.
I'm not sure how things work in Boston, but in areas where gas is provided by a regulated public utility, there is little cost to the company for infrastructure improvements. They identify infrastructure that needs to be replaced/upgraded, go to the PUC with the list of improvements and petition for a rate increase to pay for them. Then, in theory, the company is supposed to make the improvements, but that doesn't always happen, PG&E in California has been known to ask for money for specific improvements, then spending the money on other things.
We are all motivated by rewards and penalties. Money is just the convertible currency for this.
Once the insurance industry gets hold of the map, money will see the fixes are made.
Are they sure it isn't just the beans?
The infrastructure in Boston is a joke. Even the relative new Big Dig looks like it's falling apart.
I'm thinking he can expect a visit from Homeland Security on this one -- now the terrorists know how to blow up Boston. :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I was in Boston just yesterday, at Taco Bell !!
What happened to the old useable 2D maps with colors to indicate intensities? That 3D map might look nice, but how are you supposed to read anything out of that except that someone has a cool 3D map generator?
What? Is that not enough of an incentive? If it goes into the air, you cannot sell it or make money off it.
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
It's better to spend money on entitlements, pork projects, a non-existent green energy product market, and free health care for all...
At least, that's the takeaway from the last 5 or so years of dealing with our fucking retarded and senseless government.
You mean other than your property not exploding? I think your property not exploding qualifies as a financial incentive, doesn't it? Like if I told you "You need to fix this gas leak or your property will explode," I'm pretty sure you'll want to fix it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I mean, it is "Beantown" after all.
Big Dig 2: The Explosioning!
at least then the problem is fixed....for good. There is the cheap quick way and the expensive long way
Do the magic gas fairies provide the money? Because otherwise, it's an issue. Just where do you think the PUC or the Commonwealth of Mass. analog is going to get that money they give to the gas company? Have you noticed how broke and dysfunctional your state and its budget are?
Who knew that global warming/climate change was caused by Boston? That fossil fuel argument was just a smokescreen for what really causes climate change: Boston Baked Beans!
cost-to-fix vs. cost-to-take-a-chance. Chance always wins.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Stop serving chowdah everywhere.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Someone should attach a circuit board along with some wires and blinking lights to the gas pipelines. That should get the government right on top of the problem.
Some of our infrastructure is OLD. A lot of it.
Recently, we were dealing with my grandmother on the first floor. She would call saying she smelled gas, so she would open the windows then call us upstairs, of course, we couldn't smell it.... after a few times we called. They came and said our pipes were old, put some wax sealant on and suggested we fix them soon.
I didn't doubt their diagnosis, the house has had gas longer than electricity....
Then a few days later she smelled it again... this time we ended up with a whole crew down,....not in our house... but going up and down the street. Apparently it wasn't our pipes...there was a leak under the road across the street!
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Of course there's a high Methane content in the air, is "Bean Town"!
Highlighting the need for repairs, a new study detected more than 3,300 natural gas leaks throughout the city.
Is gas a countable noun? What is the number indicating? What is the unit? Number of gas pipe location? Number of gas volume? Or maybe number of people who pass gas throughout the city? I am not sure... It has all other units for their numbers but the leaking unit. Are they trying to get media attention or what?
I find this quite interesting since I'm a runner and have logged thousands of miles around Boston. From time to time (i.e. last night) I'll run through an area that smells strongly of natural gas along the sidewalk or street. I just thought it was the sewer, but this makes more sense.
That being said, the infrastructure is crumbling in Boston from the Greenline T, to the sewers (all being relined) to the LongFellow Bridge which nearly collapsed a few years ago. So this is no surprise.
How much of the methane is due to a pile of rotting leaves? They should have driven around the country where no lines exist to establish a baseline.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I'm amazed there can be so many leaks detectable with a drive-by. Does Boston not add thiophane or something similar?
In SF I've called PG&E twice in the past several years. Once was at my apartment complex, and sure enough there was a leak, although the tech was surprised I was able to smell it. The second time--walking downtown--turned out to be a false-positive (probably was generator exhaust plus pool chemicals), but I figured better safe than sorry--within reason, of course.
Don't we just love Fallout 5.....
They have a pretty picture showing huge peaks of up to 28.6ppm methane.
Methane is only flammable in air between 50,000ppm and 150,000ppm
'We just have to put the right financial incentives into place.'
Cue the leak deniers...
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
sounds like a BOOM! town to me.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
leaks is the object. 3300, and gas are modifiers to the object. natural is a modifier to gas.
let's look at your work... THERE is a conjunctive, place as subject, check. ARE, passive tense of IS, verb, check. wait, what is HEY! SQUIRREL! doing in there?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
No kidding, lots of methane in a region full of salt water marshes and fresh water swamps. What a surprise.
I worked for Boston Gas (an early predecessor to National Grid) one summer on a street crew. There are miles of 3lb pressure cast iron gas mains laid 50+ year ago. They get really pitted. Even worse are the steel high pressure pipes which just get our right dissolved by the salt water electrolysis. But it is a problem which can never be fully fixed.They now insert PVC piping down the old mains but there will still be leaks at the junctions. Besides there is naturally lots of methane around Boston, anytime you smell low tide you're really getting a big whiff of methane.
The gas company by us wouldn't fix a leak we could smell most days when sitting outside. It wasn't above the threshold they considered worth it. However, we called them in after a good size rain when the gas was bubbling up through the water and that apparently made it a big enough problem. It was certainly ominous looking to us.
Much of the gas infrastructure here bears BG stamps.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
Last time I was in Mass., I just started firing my laser rifle into every room before walking through it. Sometimes there'd be a *whoosh* of explosion and sometimes there wouldn't be, but I was never in it. Sometimes I even cleared out a few ghoulies before having to deal with them, too.
And cheaply too.
All the utility company needs to is line the old pipes with plastic (can't remember the type!!) piping which can be inserted at intervals with minimal surface disruption. Its not like having to dig up the whole line and start relaying again. We had it done in our area a couple of years ago.
Its just something that has to be done occasionally with aging infrastructure, the same will probably have to be done with cast iron water piping too....
I live in a dense residential neighborhood in a metro-suburb right next to Boston and have an active gas leak outside my house. You can smell it two houses in both directions.
The gas company has been here twice. The fire department once. The town fire chief actually called an emergency number at the gas company to ask them to fix it.
Guess what? No fix... 4 months and counting.
The party line the gas company has been giving me is (paraphrased)... "There are too many leaks in the area, so we are triaging. Unless the gas is actively leaking INTO the house (as opposed to outside of the house), we won't fix it for now. Given the Hurricane Sandy response in the mid-atlantic region, things are pushed back even further. We'll keep monitoring the leak. Trust us."
Uh, huh... yeah, my house is going to blow up. Or at the least, one of my trash cans on the curb is turning into a bottle rocket.
In the 1980s, Dublin gas network had 100s km of cast iron pipes, some 100 years old. The cast iron pipes were connected together by waxed joints, these joints were stable when moist Town Gas (coal gas) flowed through the pipes but when the city changed over to natural gas, which is dry, the wax dried out and the gas leaked. Town Gas was generated by passing superheated steam over coal, creating a gas containing hydrogen, methane and notoriously, carbon monoxide.
In the late 1980s I could not walk more than 100 feet along suburban street before coming across an overpowering stench of leaking gas. One of the temporary fixes was to drill holes into side-walks to reduce the concentration of gas underground. I don't remember any gas explosions or accidents caused by leaking cast iron pipes then the leaks happened, given the number of leaks we were very lucky.
By the way, almost half of the water supply in Dublin in lost through leaks (worst in Europe).
As an emergency Call out engineer for a National gas transportation firm i can say for sure if i called out a work gang to work on these levels of methane the gang would call me a pussy and my line manager would be putting me up for some serious work audits.
fs decaying biomass gives off mere methane
Psychologically we all hate to deal with an issue imposed on us but utility companies are supposed to be rational. A fix today won't cost more than a fix next month or next year but it will stop HUGH amounts of losses.
I hate it when an article raises more questions than it answers, especially questions directly related to procedure and which may negate the entire premise of the article.
Most old cities have combined storm and septic sewer systems. One of the hazards of such sewer systems is methane. Did they account for any such sewers in their methane scan?
And regardless of the explosion hazard, or simply the cost of the gas or some deterioration in air quality, methane is a far worse greenhouse gas than CO2. And if you have ever had a small water leak, you know how even a small leak over time results in a large quantity being leaked. (Leaking gases being worse than water because they diffuse so well the quantity of leakage is very hidden.)
If any of the SHIT-HEADs at Department of Homeland Security and White House get a 'Wiff' of the this then you are all dead as a door nail in GITMO.
Move quickly.
Delete everything. Destroy the hard drives.
Deny everything. Claim 'psychosis' and ramble on for a few minutes to the FBI at the door.
NOW!
Too late! You are already out of time.
And guess what it takes to recycle steel and copper? Time and resources (i.e. money).
Nope, it doesn't cost the company a damn thing. My grandfather spent decades tearing up old natural gas pipelines and replacing them. The sweetest words he every heard from the company came when he asked what to do with the old pipes. They were told "the company does not want them, give them to whoever will take them". My grandfather, his company crew and the local subcontractors who assisted on these pipeline replacement jobs took the pipes to the scrap yard (metal recycler) and split the proceeds. Local company management was fine with this. This was 1950s - 70s and the pipelines being replaced were old cast iron lines like what is described in the summary. Stuff originally installed around 1900.
.... a college degree is great, but, a high tech manufacturing sector isn't going to keep its machines running, much less set them up and use them, on what you learned getting your MBA or history degree. While its true, we need generic businessmen, and accountants, historians, and even telephone sanitizers; can we possibly admit that we have too many people aspiring to be on the "third ship" so to speak.
There is a common misconception that MBAs are all about accounting and finance, its not true. Unlike other master's degrees where one goes deeper into some particular field, an MBA is more of a survey of all the parts of an organization (accounting/finance, strategy, marketing, information technology, product development, project management, operations/manufacturing, law, ...) plus some outside forces that will affect it (macroeconomics, human behavior - consumer, employee and leadership), ... Those entering MBA programs are often scientist and engineers. Account/finance types are actually a minority.
Basically an MBA is an add-on to whatever you current role is, including science and engineering. It helps you to understand things from the perspective of other departments. This allows you to better coordinate your efforts with theirs and perhaps most importantly it helps you more effectively communicate with these other departments and makes it more likely you will be able to persuade them when necessary.
So you are saying that nothing, absolutely nothing can be done to lower the costs of digging a hole that was already dug once before and patching or replacing a pipe that was already laid in the hole at some point in time where all the engineering and studies were already done at one time. I say hogwash. Some thing could be done if they wanted to that could reduce the costs of maintaining the pipes.
My grandfather spent decades (1950s-70s) replacing the sort of pipes described, old cast iron gas lines. These lines were probably installed around 1900. The lines were not necessarily well documented back in those days. Plus some documentation from 100 years ago probably got lost, especially if the work was originally done by a private company. Also in the 100 years since the original installation other things may have been installed over these lines. In certain areas it was common for my grandfather (representing the gas company) to coordinate with counterparts from the electric company, water department and/or phone company and share what they knew and their guestimates before someone could start digging to get at a gas line, water line, power cable, phone cable, etc needing repair or replacement. This stuff could get pretty complicated in the 1970s, I'm sure its not getting less complicated as time passes.
is involved, so nothing will be done until there is a huge explosion that kills hundreds. Then Government will make a law that repairs must be done within 30 days of detection of a leak. Gas companies will sue, stating that the new law violates their constitutional right to free speach. By the time the lawsuits, countersuits, apeals etc...are done, Boston will have burned to the ground and been abandoned for 30 years...
From article:
with a device to measure methane, the chief chemical component of natural gas
They didn't specify that it was coming from natural gas, just made reference to it.
Your point could be very valid in identifying the main source!
Sewage shit (yes, I want to use that word strongly here) builds up over time and creates more stoppage points for festering.
Arrest these folks on suspicion of gathering information that might be useful to terrorists. Ban methane detecting devices. There Boston, I fixed yer gas leak "problem."
The map makes it look like Boston is covered in methane. The researchers located leaks and measured the level of methane in the air immediately surrounding the leak. If you zoom in the map you see the leaks are pretty sparsely located and given the concentrations measured the methane exposure to the public is negligible. If you take an air sample at a random spot in Boston six feet in the air you will get a non-detectable result, i.e. the level of methane in the air due to these leaks is no different than the level of air in the atmosphere.
So while the researchers are correct in assessing fire risk as a cost it is fraudulent for them to claim public health is at risk. A fraction of a percent of the population will almost certainly suffer due to leaving the system the way it is, but the actual cost to the public is negligible. Let's just be honest that avoiding a few people dying in an out of control fire is a good enough reason to upgrade infrastructure.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/us/massachusetts-gas-explosion-levels-building.html